GALLERY: Lollapalooza 2015

This year marks Lollapalooza’s 11th year as a destination festival—its 19th overall—in Chicago’s beautiful Grant Park alongside Lake Michigan. Since its inception, Lolla has tried to serve all music fans with a healthy dose of rock, metal, punk, pop, dance, comedy, hip-hop, and in recent years, has even fully embraced the emergence of EDM (electronic dance music). This year was no different with sets from Tyler the Creator, the Weeknd, Paul McCartney, Metallica, Sturgill Simpson, Black Pistol Fire, Gary Clark Jr., and hundreds more. Premier Guitar was onsite for all three days and here are just some of the guitar-centric highlights. The scene above is the setting sun overlooking downtown Chicago and the Samsung Galaxy main at the beginning of Sir Paul McCartney’s 2.5-hour set on Friday night.

GIVERS’ Taylor Guarisco
As the co-founding guitarist and co-lead vocalist, Taylor Guarisco has a heavy hand in blending the band’s world-music vibes with their indie-rock pop roots, all of which, was handled with his single Fender American Deluxe Telecaster Ash.

Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard
The Shakes lead lady and guitarist brought down the house during “Always Alright” when she used her main squeeze—a 1971 Gibson SG Custom. (Later that night, Howard grabbed her SG to jam on the Beatles’ classic “Get Back” with Sir Paul.)

Catfish and the Bottlemen’s Johnny Bond
The Welshmen brought their brand of Cribs-meets-Kooks rock ’n’ roll to the Samsung main stage Saturday afternoon, with lead guitarist Johnny Bond leading the fury with his trusty 2000s Gibson Les Paul Custom.

Catfish and the Bottlemen’s Van McCann
The Wales-born frontman and guitarist anchored the band’s attack with a Fender Jim Root Signature Telecaster that has an EMG 60 in the neck and an 81 in the bridge. The sparse controls are just a master volume knob and a pickup-selector switch.

Sturgill Simpson
The lone country act at this year’s Lolla, Simpson and his Martin HD-28VS brought his musical concoction of outlaw country and traditional bluegrass by working through much of the material on his latest tribute to loss, heartache, and booze: Metamodern Sounds in Country Music.

Sturgill Simpson’s Laur Joamets
Recruited from Estonia, the country-picking prodigy had a T-style onstage as a backup, but played the entire sun-drenched Saturday set with his Fano Alt de Facto PX6, which features an alder body, maple neck, and dual Fralin P-90s.

Cold War Kids’ Dann Gallucci
Former Modest Mouse guitarist Dann Gallucci joined the Cold War Kids in 2012, replacing co-founding guitarist Jonnie Russell. Dann is a big fan of T-styles and used this Fender Classic Series ’72 Telecaster Custom for “We Used to Vacation,” “Audience” and the cover of John Lennon’s “Well Well Well.”

Cold War Kids’ Nathan Willett
Like his 6-string counterpart in Cold War Kids, frontman Nathan Willett relies heavily on T-styles for their live shows. In this shot, Willett is using a Fender American Vintage ’64 Telecaster during the opener “Miracle Mile.”

The War On Drugs’ Adam Granduciel
Taking a Friday residence at the Palladia stage, Adam Granduciel played a 9-song set that touched on all three of this band’s albums. For Wagonwheel Blues’ “Arms Like Boulders” Granduciel used a ’70s Gibson Les Paul Deluxe with mini-humbuckers and for “An Ocean in Between the Waves” off Lost in the Dream, he used a 2000s Fender Stratocaster XII reissue.

Father John Misty’s David Vandervelde
Seasoned sideman David Vandervelde used a trio of guitars to cover all the bases for Father John Misty’s set—a custom, one-off Vandervelde guitar (right), a Danelectro XII, and an Eastman T486B-BK Thinline (left).

Father John Misty
Former member of Fleet Foxes and Saxon Shore, Father John Misty (aka Joshua Tillman), exclusively used his Martin HD-28 when he wasn’t channeling his inner Lizard King.

Delta Spirit’s Matthew Vasquez
The California-rock frontman brandished a Fender Jazzmaster for most of the band’s Saturday midday set at the Pepsi stage. Vasquez is seen trying to rally the crowd during an instrumental break within their cover of the Beatles’ “Don’t Let Me Down.”

Hot Chip’s Al Doyle
The disco-funk guitarist played this sunburst Ibanez AS-50 Artstar for the band’s entire 10-song set, which included a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark.” The band even threw in a snippet of a track from Al’s other band: LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends.”

The Tallest Man On Earth
Kristian Matsson, the singer-songwriter behind the Tallest Man On Earth, played the entire set with his custom Carmel Guitar Dreadnought that has an aged bear claw spruce top matched with flamed walnut back and sides.

Gary Clark Jr.
While recently honored with his own Epiphone Casino signature model—and he did play it the most during his Lolla set—Clark busted out two new 6-strings for his return to Chicago’s Grant Park. The 2013 SG was a gift from the Foo Fighters’ Pat Smear, who gave it to him during the filming of the Austin episode for Sonic Highways. According to Clark’s tech, “It’s Clark’s first live guitar with humbuckers, which has given the guitar slinger a harder sound than his typical P-90-equipped guitars, but he loves them!” He also used a white 2000s Fender Custom Shop Strat for soul-fused numbers like “Hold On” on his upcoming album The Story of Sonny Boy Slim.

Gary Clark Jr.’s Eric Zapata
Gary Clark Jr.’s right-hand man Eric Zapata played nothing but 6-strings from the ’60s during a blistering Friday afternoon set. For the first two songs, “Bright Lights” and “Ain’t Messin ’Round,” Zapata used his mid-’60s Supro Dualtone. “It’s light, is set up with high action, is good for slide, and has an unmatched tone that is big and fat,” offers Zapata. The ’65 Strat—originally white and repainted black by a previous owner—came out for new song “Hold On.” Zapata favors this S-style because it’s the most balanced, all-around guitar he owns.

St. Paul & the Broken Bones’ Browan Lollar
The seven-piece soul band based out of Birmingham, Alabama, only needed one guitarist to cover everything from Stax soul to Parliament funk-rock. Browan Lollar used his cherry red Gibson Memphis ES-335 (“my favorite guitar on earth”) and a Reverend Gil Parris II. “It's versatile and dependable—it’s like having a Les Paul-Tele hybrid,” Lollar says.

Zella Day
The 20-year-old songwriter brought a new-age brand of Americana and showed off some chops on her Gretsch 6121 Roundup during her set on the Pepsi sidestage.

Jamestown Revival’s Jonathan Clay
Co-founding member Jonathan Clay bounced back and forth from lap steel to his flattop during the band’s afternoon set. Clay on his Martin: “I got that OM-35 about 12 years ago and I’ve played it so much now that there’s almost a hole worn through the soundboard. The more I’ve played it, the more it opens up and sounds better—the past three to four years it seems like this guitar has really come to life. This particular model wasn't really anything I intentionally decided on. We just crossed paths, and there was magic there.”

Death From Above 1979’s Jesse Keeler
A longtime Rickenbacker user, Keeler is now very comfortable with his ’69 Dan Armstrong bass. He likes the short scale, 24-fret design, which better suits his playing style and approach than anything he’s ever played. Keeler switched between this and a similar ’71 model. Here he’s thrashing with the ’69 on the band’s ripper “Turn It Out.”

GIVERS’ Josh LeBlanc
The Louisiana-based band’s low-end duties are held down by the spaz-matic Josh LeBlanc, who played nearly the entire set with his 2000s Fender Precision bass. LeBlanc’s manic onstage persona ranges from full-on rage to almost lackadaisical. The 4-string is nearly original except for the yellow chicken-head knobs.

Hippo Campus’ Zach Sutton
The Hippo bassist relied on one bass for the band’s set on the BMI stage Saturday afternoon—his beloved Fender Jazz 5-string because he believes “the extra sing allows for maximum versatility, and of course, pretentiousness.”

Hippo Campus’ Nathan Stocker
Don’t dismiss these young cats from Minnesota just because they barely graduated from the Kidspalooza stage—the members are between 19 and 21 years old. You can’t deny the catchy-as-hell, twin-guitar grooves displayed at Lollaplooza Saturday afternoon. Stocker mainly used a ’62 Fender American Vintage Series Telecaster Custom because as he put it: “This guitar is so easy to play for my wee-little hands and the classic Tele pickups allow me to achieve a surf-y and elegant tone, while being able to rock out when I want to.”

Shakey Graves' Patrick O'Connor
Looking like Game of Thrones villain Ramsay Bolton's doppelganger, O'Connor backed the hollowbody-rocking Graves with his tried-and-true vintage Gibson Les Paul Junior that has two P-90s and a Bigsby tailpiece.

BadBadNotGood’s Chester Hansen
Jazz-punk-EDM power trio BadBadNotGood has collaborated with hip-hop artists Tyler the Creator, Ghostface Killah, and Frank Ocean. Bassist Chester Hansen is shown here with his ’73 Gibson Grabber, getting down during a bass solo in the song “Velvet.” The Grabber model is famous for the sliding pickup. “It’s pretty neat for recording or working out new tones,” Chester says. “I play .055–.110 flatwounds with my action cranked up, so it’s intense to play, but it sounds so huge! I love the aggressive punchy tone of the Grabber—it shares many characteristics of a vintage P-bass but at a fraction of the cost. It’s super durable for touring and I haven't taken anything else on the road since I got it.”

Hippo Campus’ Jake Luppen
Sometimes guitarists have too many choices—we’re looking at you John Mayer—and sometimes fate makes the choice for us. In the case of Hippo Campus frontman/guitarist Jake Luppen, he had to use just his Fender ’62 American Vintage Reissue Jazzmaster because all of his other guitars were broken.

Black Pistol Fire’s Kevin McKeown
The band with the most energy at this year’s Lolla had to be Black Pistol Fire. Even with only two members—drummer Eric Owen and guitarist/singer Kevin McKeown—they rocked the BMI stage like a rock ensemble bringing down a headlining stage. McKeown set the intensity by riffing his 1989 Epiphone Sheraton II while on his back, on top of stage monitors, in the crowd, or while jumping off Owen’s drum kit. This was the only guitar he had when recording the band's first two albumsÃ¢??S/T and Big Beat '59. He loves humbucker tone he can get from it because it's a fat and dirty sound when you need it to be, but it can still clean up when he needs to quiet things down (which isn't often). Take note, people: This is how you rock!

Delta Spirit’s William McClaren
The indie-rock band’s lead guitarist lays down a tasty solo with his well-loved Fender Classic Series ’50s Telecaster for their barnstormin’ live rendition of “Bushwick Blues.”

Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker
Much like the wide spectrum of soundscapes Kevin Parker and the rest of Tame Impala play from night to night, the band’s mastermind used two very contrasting axes throughout their Saturday evening set—an American-made, semi-hollow Rickenbacker 330 and a budget-friendly Squier J Mascis Jazzmaster.

Metallica’s Kirk Hammett
Known for playing wah-fueled solos and hosting horror festivals, Metallica’s Kirk Hammett fused both passions when he and ESP released the KH-WZ signature that features an alder body, maple neck, rosewood fretboard, a set of EMG 81 pickups, and artwork from the cult classic White Zombie. The lead guitarist flashes a smile during the fan-favorite “From Whom the Bells Toll” from Ride the Lightning.

Metallica’s Robert Trujillo
Metallica’s low-end monster used a handful basses to cover the band’s discography-spanning set, but in this shot he’s using a Trujillo-labeled J-bass during the opening buildup of “From Whom the Bells Toll.”

Metallica’s James Hetfield
Papa Het went with a bevy of ESP signature 6-strings during the band’s Saturday night headlining set. Here he’s using his signature ESP Iron Cross SW that features a mahogany body and neck, a maple top, and is loaded with Hetfield’s signature EMG pickups, which are customized versions of the 60-81 set.

Chris Kies has degrees in Journalism and History from the University of Iowa and has been with PG dating back to his days as an intern in 2007. He maintains the website and social media, occasionally writes an artist feature, regularly hosts Rig Rundowns, and shoots/edits video for NAMM show coverage. Other than that, he spends time with his pitbull and enjoys non-guitar-related hobbies.

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